Purpose
by FerrumVigro
Summary: A shock strikes his spine forcing a groan from his raw throat, his fingers twitch and eyelids flutter; he wakes once again to the covered faces of mad men.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I own nothing what-so-ever you recognise from the Bioshock Playing field. 

A.N: Contains spoliers for BS2. This is just something I've been playing about with. Maybe I've posted this before...I cant mind...:P

_"Italics"-Think of it as an Audio-Diary recording or memory._

**_"Bold"-Present event._**

**_MMK?_**

* * *

_"In all seriousness, Jane, you would do that for me?"_

_Twinkling laugher, light and flirtatious._

_"But, of course, I have you and for now I am happy with just the two of us…" _

_A touch, soft and provoking-**a flash of pain through his skull sending the air from his lungs-**a memory, a dream of a smile._

_"…John, I can wait."_

_****__~.~.~.~_

_**A shock strikes his spine forcing a groan from his raw throat, his fingers twitch and eyelids flutter; he wakes once again to the covered faces of mad men.**_

He has not spoken in two weeks or has he eaten, his throat remains raw and his stomach empty. This is no silent protest or determined hunger strike. He does so because it is what they want of him and he has learnt this to be the way of things.

Two weeks pervious, he had been torn from his cell, passive and deteriorated from the threshold of sleep. He was dragged along cold metallic corridors carrying the ever present scent of sterile chemicals to a room he knew all too well.

He had not fought but held his breath and bit his tongue until it bled. He was used to these nightly disturbances, knew what was to happen and what he would be put through. It had been no surprise when he was thrown and held down on some odd yet familiar steel table; it was bolted to the floors securely. He was strapped down and his eyes covered by gloved hands; a needle was forced into his neck sending cold piercing numbness through his throat and down it spread until he had felt nothing but the rough texture of the leather straps binding his bare feet.

The world faded.

And then there had been nothing.

When he woke three days later he found himself back in his cell. His cellmate sat on his own bed facing him with hollow eyes,

"Wish I'd known." He'd said.

"Could have asked for your last words, lad." He told him.

It was then he found his throat black and blue, red and raw from the things they had done to him; his voice had been taken, replaced by moans and a haunting singing, so very like the background noise of a undersea paradise.

His side had burned and after removing his dirty rags he wore he found a freshly healing wound running under his ribcage, the stitching was nice and tidy; it seemed misplaced on his pale flesh. He pulled his clothes back on and ignored the pain and never, _never_, thought of what they had done.

He never felt the champs of hunger no matter how long he went.

He had not spoken since that day, had not eaten or been removed from his cell.

He waited. They would come.

Any last words?

No, the dead can not speak.

~.~.~.~

"_So, what's your name, Kid?"_

"_The guys here have dubbed me 'Topside', and I say if the bill fits…Well just call me Johnny Topside."_

_A handsome chuckle and slight laughter._

"_Topside, eh? Sure, fits perfectly. I have to tell you, kid, you've done the impossible, we believed Rapture to be a hidden paradise. Yet here you are…quite the something."_

"_I'm as surprised to be here as you are to see me. But a paradise? Yes…this place truly is something else altogether. The things here…are amazing, its unbelievable ."_

"_Welcome to Rapture, Topside, you better get used to it."_

_~.~.~.~_

He never got used to it.

The pain.

It seemed their purpose each time was to simply find more extreme and crueler ways to punish him though what he was being punished for he either did not know or had long forgotten. He seemed to forget more each day, every time he was bought from his cell he returned with less. He woke to the faces of strangers now.

But he woke and he told himself that was good enough even if all he did was wake to pain.

**A needle is bought forward in slim hands, his head is strapped, the thick band across his forehead holds tight when he tries to slip a glance at the substance inside the glass casing.**

He spends his days mostly confused and sometimes in the between hours his own name is a blur. The men who do this, who cause the pain and suffering, watch him with hopeful eyes, sometimes with awe. The man he shares a cell with watches him with fear and repulsion; why, he doesn't know, his days are occupied by unfulfilling activities, some days his feet do not touch the floor at all, during such times he is strapped to machines, needles piercing his flesh, his eyes covered and mouth forced open with tubes and wires.

Their metallic tang and that of his own blood lacing his tongue have become Home.

**The pain is mild, he doesn't moan or scream, a low rumble is admitted instead; perhaps in welcome to the mildness. The white-coat steps back, reaches for a chart- the clicking speaks in volumes-and removes himself from the room. He is left to watch the blank monitor above him, hearing only his ragged breathing and blood pumping through his ears.**

When in his cell he sits and watches the strange men in lab coats and shining black boots move to and fro, back and forth, thinking they look rather like butterflies fluttering about uselessly looking for purpose-_what is _his _purpose-_. There are no flowers here, he tells them in soft moans, only metal and water and pain and blood.

Butterflies live on the surface.

WE belong there.

Home.

But that's nothing but a dream.

~.~.~.~

"_What is you name?"_

_Silence._

"_What is your name?"_

_The soft brush of cloth against skin._

"_I will repeat again; What is YOUR name?"_

_A irrigated sigh._

"_If you fail to co-operate, I will be forced to deal you the punish-"_

"_I'm…"_

"_Yes? What is your name?"_

"_I am Subje-…"_

"_Continue, please or your answer will be taken as incorrect."_

_A defeated sigh of a man those soul has been taken and tortured._

"_I am Subject Delta."_

"_Very Good."_

_~.~.~.~_

**An image flashes across the screen and then there is whiteness and ringing, it happens so fast he takes no notice of it until a harmonious sound calls his attention. The screen is no longer blank, instead a moving image plays silently before him. Transfixed, he watches and feels his eyes drawn to the screen even when he blinks.**

**In the end, they come again and unfasten his bindings. They watch him and he stares back unblinking, unknowingly emitting a slow whaling.**

**They take him to his cell, lower him to his frame and he sleeps.**

**He dreams of a small child's laughter, the humming of butterfly wings and a feeling of pure ecstasy engulfing him in red.**

* * *

Maybe more?


	2. Chapter 2

_Disclaimer: I do not own "Bioshock" or am I making any money off this...blah yah...and all that jazz. You get this by now._

_A/N: This is all unbeta-ed so I apologize for any mistakes._

* * *

He lives on.

He learns to listen.

Not to the screams of torment and desperation from the cells around him, but to the eerie world he is slowly being forced into. Life has become a rhythm, full of melody and a beauty only he can understand. The gurgle of plasmids as they are filtered through pipes, the slice of needles through flesh, the forever present hum of machinery and his own low, inhuman, groans. He learns to listen to it all and his mind somehow begins to understand the flashes upon the screens he is forced to watch daily.

His existence is painful and full of hate and anger an-

-but there is the music. The sick perverted beauty seen through fevered, drugged, eyes.

There is the heavy lumbering steps of the metal men passing in the corridors throughout the night, being dragged through the hallways, metal hammering metal, and the almost silent sounds of the sea surrounding them. The whisper of parents, telling children to hush; the air rushing with excitement and awe as, once again, another tin-man falls, groaning, under his hand.

As he learns to listen, he learns to calm down, to breath deep and relax.

He learns the Rules.

He plays his part, does what he is told and makes the white-coats happy, the spectators clap harder.

His good behavior is observed and noticed; the white-coats come for him at night.

* * *

"_Subject Delta?"_

_A man's irritated sigh, the rustle of clothing as one sits and the itch of pen on paper._

"_Yeah, you know 'm, the tall bloke who performs in the theater on Thursdays; looks normal enough for a test subject. I heard he's being moved up into the Alpha Programme. He reacts well to the plasmids and with the latest one being so successful, he's more controllable, so…"_

"_There going to push him farther. See what they can get out of him? Pathetic really, were pulling strings with the Alphas; not one lives through the first few days."_

_Silence as both ponder, relive memories of death and failure._

_Until._

"_Didn't the last one kill Suchong?"_

_A pause._

"_Don't you go mindin' bout who killed Suchong."_

"_Oh…"_

_The truth._

* * *

He is moved to another unit, another cage with enforced walls and little light. Standing he takes up most of its room, but it's better than the quarantine chambers he was once forced into for days. He can move here. Breathe that bit better. He has a bed again.

Life continues on as before.

They raise him from fevered dreams of wonderland, strap him down, pump plasmids into his altered system, leaving him lying eagle-spread staring at the ceiling, listening, drooling his memories away. Drip by drip.

"What is _this_," he thinks hazily, and subconsciously moans in his tongue-less tone, "This…these _people_. This _music_. This…this…_dream_…of…what am…_I_, now…"

His heart-rate drops and the beeps of the machines around him increase; the white-coats panic.

And he fades to sweet nothingness.

* * *

**His skin is on fire, as though flames lick his flesh, melting and boiling his organs; his bones are being broken, again and again and aga-Pins are being forced through his eyes, to the back of his skull, splitting the bone, his vision is red from all the blood; and he is screaming, roaring, thundering, for the pain to stop, for the madness to end; to just end, to die.**

They increase the dosage.

**The suck and gurgle of fluid flowing through the pipes into his flesh and beyond, the ticking of timers shallow him; the murmurs of madness around him seem teasing. **

**He simply adds his cries to the music that only he can hear.**

**Well done, they whisper and laugh.**

And once more, all fades to black.

* * *

_A long time ago, he dreams, a man once stood at the bottom of the ocean and looked upon a city through a window, a small shadow against a colossal Utopia._

_A long time ago, he dreams, a man had been taken from his life above and forced to live the life of a lie below._

_Once upon a time, he remembers, he had been locked away in the dark and tortured and ruined…forgotten._

When he wakes, this time, he is alone, in his new cell on his bed. He inspects himself like routine; his body hums to him as he raises his hand. His veins glow in the darkness of his cell with the flow of ADAM circulating his system and there is a pipe producing from his nose to a oxygen tank hooked on the wall.

It hurts to move.

He imagines the tonics flowing through his veins and arteries, spreading to his muscles and limbs, each beat of his heart pumping them; the two scarlet and sapphire figure-fluids of ADAM and EVE, twisting their way into all that he is, changing him until he doesn't even know who or what he is anymore.

His clothes have been removed.

His hand returns to his side on the bed. He cant bring himself to think, it all hurts too much and somewhere his mind tells him that this is all good; just stop thinking, just stop thinking, _just stop_…

So he returns to his dreams.

* * *

The table he sits on is freezing. It reminds him of the theatre in a twisted way, of a fistful of death-ice from his fingertips and cold, cold veins. He is being inspected by a white-coat, a man with large ears and a thick line of hair above his top lip; his name is Dr. G. Alexander, or so his overall states.

Dr. G Alexander is taking measurements of each of his limbs this evening and so it makes sense as to why his rags have been removed and why the table he so very cold on his bare flesh. As the white-coated man works away, he keeps still and watches him work, feeling strange to be sitting up as he is examined. He can see around him and is not forced to stare unblinkingly up at the ceiling or at a flashing screen; its much more interesting this way, much more to see.

Watching G. Alexander as he works stirs something within him and it takes awhile to find the source of discomfort.

Alexander's hands are very much like his own, their structures are the same only…only his are different in that the skin that covers them is paler, so pale that the luminous veins underneath show through and where the doctors are thick with tissue, his are lumpy with pronouncing bones, married with scars and hairless. He knows the doctor is a normal man, maybe he has a touch of Adam in him, maybe he doesn't, yet he is sane enough to know that he does not look like the doctor; as a normal man.

Looking down, his chest is a mass of bones and stitches, bruised tissue and metal merging with skin; a rainbow, he thinks, of colour, a rainbow underneath the ocean. Pale, pale skin, blues and yellows fading to brown and red, purple and black, the shine of metal reflecting-_the centre of it all_-the glow of Adam altered organs and veins.

_"I'm a work of art,"_ he states, enlightenment dawning, but all Gilbert Alexander hears is a chilling whale erupted from Subject Delta's throat.

"Are you….all right?" he questions unsure, afraid, yet he does not step away, he has read enough to know that Delta is not stupid or completely without freewill; he can understand him if he wants too and will not harm him without reason.

The man on the table looks up and meets his eyes-they're a horrible sight, much like those of the Gatherers, aglow from the high doses of Adam in the blood system-and he shrugs, a movement of bony shoulders and frail-like arms.

Of course he isn't "all right", how thoughtless of him, Delta must be in great pain.

And yet…he carries on with his measurements, recording the details. He is once again ignorant to the man sitting before him who has just realised he is a miracle.

Delta remains quiet for the rest of the inspection.

Dr. G. Alexander pencils in a cocktail of Sports Boost and Armoured Shell tonic to Delta's next schedule, for good measure.

And life goes on, and on, and…

* * *

_A/N: I only remembered I had posted this during one of my replays of Bioshock during the week. So I decided to try and get back into the writing spirit and coughed this up. It's been awhile..._

_I will-plan/aim to-rewrite/edit this all in due time. And I know it's all scattered about and broken but thats...how I want it to be, I see Deltas life and mind as a shattered, broken thing thats being turned into something he doesnt understand yet I want to show the pain he, as a man, feels and the life he had and is slowly being forced to forget... I'm also sorry about the page rulers, nothing else will stick for me when I save...I friking hate them..._

_Thanks for reading!_


End file.
